Age and gender effects on the development of executive function skills: A multisite study of school-aged children and adolescents

Executive functions have a prolonged development, which offers a valuable opportunity to examine age-related changes across diverse sociocultural contexts. Yet, most evidence comes from Minority World populations, and exceptional cross-cultural research is heavily focused on the preschool period. To address these geographical and developmental gaps, this pre-registered report involves (i) an international sample (N = 2,898; 47% male; Mage = 11.37 years, SD = 1.83) from 13 distinct sites across Majority and Minority World settings, and (ii) a harmonized online battery of executive function tasks, enabling speed–accuracy trade-offs to be considered. Age-related gains were consistently small to moderate in size and gender differences were minimal. We interpret these findings as supporting a model of cultural universality with specificity.